[1] Paintings by John Wootton and Thomas Lawrence's portrait of King George IV are depicted on the wall of the Royal Lodge by Gunn.

[6] In his autobiography A Mother's Disgrace, the Australian writer Robert Dessaix describes Conversation Piece as "superficially boring", and likens the domestic setting to "express[ing] an ideal of seemliness, good taste and bienseance" that people aspired to on the North Shore of Sydney in the 1950s.

[8] The director of the NPG, Roy Strong, subsequently had lunch with the Queen in 1967 and wrote in his diary that "She denounced the James Gunn and also went on to say that she wouldn't allow a portrait, which has just been finished, to go to Scotland as it was too awful.

[8] One of the trustees of the NPG, Lawrence Gowing, wrote to Strong to tell him that "The domestic arrangements of the Royal Family are steadily decreasing in public importance and the only excuse for representing them again would be if we got a really remarkable picture.

[8] The Italian artist Pietro Annigoni was eventually commissioned; his painting of the Queen, Her Majesty in Robes of the British Empire, was revealed in 1970.